Stoic Snippets 211

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say about you anything injurious, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. 

You will discover that there is no reason to take any trouble that these men may have this or that opinion about you. 

However, you must be well disposed towards them, for by nature they are friends. 

And the gods too aid them in all ways, by dreams, by signs, towards the attainment of those things on which they set a value. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.27